Writing in the wilderness

What first stuns the young writer emerging from college is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul; a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome.

--Flannery O'Connor, 1948 (quoted in "A Good Writer Is Hard to Find," by Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2009.)